


The Horsefly King

by krrs



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bucky is a Cute Country Boy, I Don't Even Know, M/M, Southern Gothic, Steve is a Devil of Vague and Mysterious Origin, There's a Little Bit of Violence But It's Not Too Bad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-21
Updated: 2019-03-21
Packaged: 2019-11-26 19:47:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18184952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/krrs/pseuds/krrs
Summary: Steve Rogers is the kind of kid who crosses the road without looking. Who picks fights he knows he can’t win. He likes to wade waist deep in the bayou where the alligators crawl and laugh while he does it. He’ll trespass on moonlit farms until there are shotguns being waved in the air, their owners screaming at him to scram. He waits until they fire a warning shot into the air and take aim, then, and only then, he leaves. Bucky thinks he’s the saddest town rebel Boothe, Louisiana has ever seen.





	The Horsefly King

**Author's Note:**

> This is sort of a prequel to a longer, very very much longer fic idea that may or may not ever see the light of day lmao
> 
> Hope you enjoy and please excuse spelling/grammar mistakes!

Steve Rogers is the kind of kid who crosses the road without looking. Who picks fights he knows he can’t win. He likes to wade waist deep in the bayou where the alligators crawl and laugh while he does it. He’ll trespass on moonlit farms until there are shotguns being waved in the air, their owners screaming at him to scram. He waits until they fire a warning shot into the air and take aim, then, and only then, he leaves. Bucky thinks he’s the saddest town rebel Boothe, Louisiana has ever seen.

He thinks this especially now, as he watches his father drag Steve by the hair out of their garage turned mechanic shop and throw him down on the front lawn. Bucky rushes out the screen door and down the porch steps when he hears the commotion.

“Dad!” He screams, taking a instinctual step backwards as he watches the arc of his father’s hand. “Dad, stop it!” It’s the middle of night, Bucky’ll wake the neighbors and he’ll probably be in trouble for it. “Don’t hurt him!”

There’s the sound of flesh hitting flesh, a curling of the knee as Steve’s body tries to keep space between itself and it’s attacker. 

“Little fuckin’ thief! You think it’s okay to steal from hardworkin’ folk?” He spits at Steve. He doesn’t answer, he just squirms further backwards and away. “Don’t walk away when I’m talkin’ to you, boy!” And then Bucky’s father is stalking after him, picking him up by the hair again and tossing him down. 

“Stop it!” Bucky screams, feet carrying him forward. His mother and sister exiting the house with back to back bangs of the screen door and huddling together on the porch.

“George, that’s enough!” comes his mother’s voice. The beating continues and his sister starts crying, little sniffles and hiccups mixing in with the pants and grunts and screaming crickets. Bucky thinks about stepping in. He thinks about it once, twice. And then he does. With a running start and teenage adrenaline, he reaches at his father’s pit stained t-shirt and pushes. George goes down, “the fuck!”, he yells.

“Go!” Bucky yells to Steve. “What are you doing, go!”

Steve lays there panting on the lawn, looking at Bucky wide eyed and bloody. The wind is knocked out of Bucky’s lungs when a hard hit rockets into his ribs. His mother and sister scream on the porch and the neighbors lights are on, just yellow squares in the distance. Bucky stays down for the few seconds needed to inflate his lungs and then he’s up again, pulling on his dad’s shirt in the dark. “Dad, c’mon. C’mon! You gotta stop!”

Action unwinds. George Barnes slows. His fists uncurl and he spits on Steve, calls him a “fuckin’ thief, no good bastard” and pulls Bucky by the arm back up the lawn, up the porch steps and through the screen door. Bucky tries to twist out of his grasp, anger flaring each second spent in his father’s grip as they approach the kitchen sink.

George releases his son. He runs the dishrag under water until it warms and watches the spicket. “I’m sorry for hittin’ you, Buck.” In another part of the house, Bucky can hear his mother ushering his sister back up to the second level and the staircase creaks. The water hits the metal of the sink. “You hear me?”

George can’t see him nod. “Yes,” he says.

“Good.” And then his dad turns, hands him the wet rag and cups his cheek with the other hand, briefly. “Go clean that boy up,” he says quietly.

“Yes, sir.”

He sprints out of the house again, screen door smacking shut. By now, Steve is just a shadow at the end of the dirt driveway, slugging feet and tilted shoulders. Hardly indistinguishable from the blackness. Bucky calls after him, pace picking up to a slow jog. 

“Hey, come back!” Bucky calls again. Steve’s silhouette melts, swivels and pauses. “I aint gonna hurt you just come here!”

It takes Steve about a minute, a good fifty seconds to amble back towards Bucky and towards the house. Bucky waits until he’s in full view to beckon Steve up on his porch where there’s at least some light. It’s faint and buzzing and yellow, not as pretty as moonlight. Steve hobbles up the three stairs and leans on the railing, eyeing Bucky. He meets Steve’s eye for only a few seconds before he has to look away. Teenage boys aren’t good at this kind of thing.

But Steve is truthfully, strangely pretty. Even like this. And it’s hard not to look.

Bucky sticks his hand out, all the warmth of the wet rag was sucked out into the summer air and it’s instead now just heavy and wet in his fist. It feels like such a lame offering. 

“You’re Steve Rogers.”

Steve takes the rag and Bucky looks up. Steve wipes at his nose, winces. “Yep,” he mutters. With Steve concentrated on cleaning his skin, Bucky figures he can get away with staring for a second or two. There’s a lot of blood on top of sharp features. Steve is small, smaller than the rumors made him sound. “Do I know you?”

Bucky’s eyes snap away. “Uh, no. We’ve never met. I’m Bucky.” He tries to make it casual and leans back on the side of the house across from Steve. A handful of moths flutter at the lights. “Sorry about my dad.”

Steve shrugs and surveys the blood on the rag. “S’fine,” he says. Bucky’s common sense kicks in and he pulls the rag from Steve and the buzzing of the lights grows louder.

“Stay here.”

He goes back inside to ring out the rag in the sink and run it under some hot water, a little copper river splattering down the drain. He frowns. Then returns to the porch and hands the rag back to Steve. “What were you doing in our shop anyways?” His question is met with another shrug and Bucky blinks. “You’re from the other side of the tracks, right?” Bucky tries.

“Yep,” confirms Steve.

“So, what’re you doin’ all the way out here for?”

Shrug.

“Sounded like you were just throwing things around in there.”

Shrug.

“Were you?”

Shrug. There’s a sort of light in Steve’s eyes. Like the lamps on the porch, his pupils buzz. It’s far from a glow. Not pretty like the moon or lightning bugs or a campfire flickering. 

“I’ve heard a lot of,” Bucky flounders for a more polite word but can’t find one. “Rumors about you. That you like to get hurt for kicks or somethin’.” Bucky has to avert his gaze again because the buzz of Steve’s gaze vibrates under his skin. Steve hums and the vibrations drag. “Were you lookin’ for a fight tonight?”

Steve sighs and let’s the hand holding the rag drop. “Sure was, what’s it to you?” His voice is deep, dark. 

“Just wonderin’.”

Bucky steps forward warily and takes the rag from Steve again. He goes back inside, rinses the copper out and returns. The house is quiet now, his sister is most likely back asleep. His dad most likely fuming in his armchair. His mom most likely sitting up in bed, waiting for Bucky to come back inside for the night.

“Why do you do things like that?” Bucky asks, handing over the rag. Their fingers brush for a second and the faint perpetual buzzing of Louisiana explodes in layers, deep, eardrum pounding buzzing and then it’s gone. Bucky sucks in air and looks at Steve.

“Because I can,” Steve shrugs.

“That’s not an answer.”

“You mean, it’s not an answer you like.”

Bucky sighs. “Is it for the attention? You like the reputation or somethin’?” And that makes Steve laugh and look at Bucky like he just told a fantastic joke.

“Sure, if that’s what’ll make you happy.” Steve has wiped most of the blood off his face and just dabs at the crack in his lip every couple seconds with the rag. 

“Is it because you’re sad?”

This question doesn’t get a reaction from Steve. He just looks at Bucky with those buzzing blue eyes and dabs at his lip while leaning back against the railing of Bucky’s porch like he belongs there. Bucky’s stomach flutters. “Not sad,” he says. But the way he says it is like sinking rocks in a lake. Disappointed, maybe. Resigned to his fate.

“Bored?” Bucky guesses. Steve gives a half nod.

“Close enough.” He says heavily and lays the rag out over the railing to dry. Steve’s elbows come back up to rest on the railing as he continues to watch Bucky. Bucky should really be going back inside. There’s just this sad buzzing that keeps him tethered here.

“You know everyone calls you the town rebel.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Bucky blinks at Steve, arms folding over his chest when a sticky breeze blows. “You’re eighteen, right? You’re my age?”

Shrug.

“When you do think you’ll get bored of gettin’ bored?”

A grin sneaks onto Steve face but he doesn’t say anything and his eyes don’t soften. Bucky thinks that maybe he just crossed some imaginary line. 

Bucky clears his throat. “You should probably head home, your folks’ll worry.” Steve laughs again like Bucky said something real funny. The moths dancing on the lights are distracting and the bugs are screeching and the toads are bellowing and the neighbors lights have all gone out and Steve’s eyes are buzzing. 

“If you ever need anything,” Steve starts and pushes himself off the railing and beckons Bucky forward. There’s not a lot of room between them but Bucky steps closer anyway. “Bury this at the crossroads.” Steve’s palm opens and he hands Bucky a quarter-sized coin. Bucky studies it with a frown. It’s not silver, not copper, not gold, not anything but somehow all of them at once. On one side there’s a detailed engraving of a horsefly and Bucky runs his thumb over it and then flips the coin over to study the strange inscription there. It’s a sigil of some sort, strange lines curving together and then jutting out. As soon as he looks away, he forgets what it looked like. “Thanks for tonight, I guess. I owe you.” Steve says.

“What the hell is this?”

“Like I said, if you ever need anything…” Steve mumbles. The bruise on his cheek is just beginning to bloom. Red rings around his eyes, swollen lip and a strange and strong face. Bucky pockets the coin and Steve smiles. “Or if you’re ever bored like me.” The buzzing is overwhelming now. All consuming like the two of them are standing inside a swarm of flies. 

Steve beckons Bucky closer. Bucky takes a step, nervous and blushing. A finger pulls at the bottom of his shirt to drag him the remaining inches forward and then Steve’s lips are pressing against the junction of his jaw and neck. It’s about all Steve can reach and Bucky’s mind goes blank. His right hand comes up to lean on the porch banister and his lungs refuse to move. Fluttering black, green, blue, some kind of metal and shiny translucent buzzing fills up his throat and his eyes squeeze shut. 

Just like when their fingers brushed, the buzzing is magnified and pulsing in fast pin pricks showing no mercy. His fingers grip the banister tighter and his toes curl on the wood of the porch. The kiss is heavy against his skin and then it’s over and he can breathe and hear again. And Bucky laughs. He’s not terribly experienced in kissing but he’s never felt something like that, whatever it was. 

He can still feel the static of the vibrations and he steps away. Spreading on Steve’s face is a tiny, amused smile that makes his lip start to bleed again. “Don’t lose my coin.” He says, deep and dark again.

Bucky’s just regained his balance when Steve turns and thuds down the stairs of the porch, tilted shoulders drifting further from where Bucky stands. Along with Steve goes the buzzing noise, leaving only the flutter of moth wings against lightbulbs gently tinking into the night. Bucky watches the moths and fishes out the coin from his pocket. He turns it over in hand, rubs the engraving and turns it back over. In the yellow light of the porch, it buzzes faintly against his skin.


End file.
